Koi
Top Critic Average
Critics Recommend
Critic Reviews for Koi
KOI is the type of game of which the stumbles sting the most.
Koi is a beautiful, soft and serene game that doesn't quite manage to fulfil the ideas and message it is clearly trying to convey.
I have no doubt that we will one day enjoy marvelous console games out of China. But this, sadly, isn't one of them, and it's lamentable to see this exchange begin on such an inauspicious note.
Despite the feeling of catharsis I achieve when playing Koi, it still lacks many of the fundamentals that make a video game compelling. Add in the fact that the experience only lasts around two hours, and the result is a game that feels incomplete. Perhaps a future installment could add weekly downloads that would help players achieve peace on a daily basis without being repetitive.
As is the case in any creative medium, games with noble artistic aspirations aren't all created equal.
KOI relies more on its look and sound than its gameplay, and the overall lack of difficulty and the shortness of the game really makes it hard to justify buying for most PS4 owners.
KOI is a game that almost went somewhere. While it has a pleasing aesthetic, and peaceful ambiance, what’s on offer is woefully short. So the score earned here, for the first game developed in China and released for Western audiences on the PlayStation 4, should serve as a sign for any other developers in China to strive for something more. KOI stands as a good start, but with a bit more development time, we could have seen a longer story mode, and perhaps some sense of what was actually going on in the world above the little fish.
Koi isn’t a bad game. It just lacks content and a level of polish found in even the smallest of indie games these days.
